House Passes Bill to Reduce TSA Wait Times

Airport wait times are so bad, even the government is getting involved.

After weeks of nonstop airport chaos in the news, Congress is finally taking action to fix the Transportation Security Administration mess: In near record time, the House of Representatives on Tuesday unanimously approved the TSA's so-called "Checkpoint Optimization and Efficiency Act,” which was introduced at the end of May and rushed through in an attempt to stave off a summer gridlock at airports.

“With the summer travel season upon us, it should not be the case the passengers are missing flights or that airports are approaching operational ground stop due to long lines at TSA security checkpoints,” said Rep. John Katko, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security. “The House took action to address this crisis. Now, it’s time for the Senate to do its job and take action on this measure.”

And while the bill still needs to clear the Senate, that chamber is also under pressure to do something, which means the odds are (maybe) in our favor. But just what will the legislation do? For one, it will get more boots on the ground, or, more precisely, in the right place, by shifting some of the TSA’s “behavior detection officers” trained to spot suspicious individuals to more traditional screening duties. The controversial behavior-spotting program, called SPOT, has already been roundly criticized as ineffective, anyway: In a statement praising the House vote, the American Alliance of Airport Police Officers said that the program “has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars” and that is has “diverted valuable resources that could have gone to screening.”

The legislation also requires the TSA to establish minimum staffing levels at its checkpoints, and will give local TSA directors more flexibility to make staffing decisions, and allow the agency to use workers who aren’t trained screeners to perform non-sensitive chores like restocking bins.

Unsurprisingly, the measure also looks to boost enrollment in TSA PreCheck, the expedited screening program whose enrollments have fallen well short of official goals to bring some 25 million fliers into the ranks (it now stands at around three million). To increase the number of travelers with PreCheck, the legislation requires the TSA to bring in private vendors that can develop technology solutions, including offering online enrollments. Currently, prospective members need to appear at a TSA approved site for fingerprinting and pay a $85 fee, good for five years.

At present, the TSA is working with one such private contractor, MorphoTrust USA, which said recently that it will add new enrollment centers at ten airports over the next three months, and is “dispatching enrollment agents out into the field,” according to Charles Carroll, senior vice president of identity services at the company. It’s also setting up onsite enrollment centers at organizations or companies whose employees travel frequently. “We believe PreCheck is the best-kept secret in the industry,” Carroll says. “It’s never been a capacity issue, it’s been an awareness issue.”

For its part, the TSA has indicated it wants to expand its relationship with a number of private companies in order to ramp up a major marketing campaign that will reach millions more fliers. Given the number of frustrated fliers out there, that shouldn't be a tough sell.